Indigo Dyeing Workshop

I had the pleasure of attending my first Indigo Dye

 Workshop last Monday (the 20th Jan)

 It was a lot of fun and I have returned home with the 

dye vat (bucket) so I can do some more experimenting!

Here's some pics I took along the way....

 Our tutor showing us some Shibori Techniques  

Then we had the opportunity to try some ourselves....

 Marbles and rubber-bands

 Knots and rubber-bands

 Wrapped (diagonally) around a piece of pipe,

scrunched up and tied with cotton yarn.

 Our dye vats/buckets

 Our pieces of fabric "soaked" for 5 minutes..

...then it's lift out into the air where the magic happens!

 The dye is green but as it oxidizes witht eh air, it turns blue!.

Then it gets dunked back into the vat for another 5 minutes.

You do this three times...

 ...then rinse, rinse, rinse

 I was a really WET day so drying on the 

clothes frame wasn't going to happen.

 One of the women's scarves. Aren't they awesome?

 Someone else tried socks..I love them!

...and my efforts. Room for improvement and more exploration.

I've order some mordants plus a reducing agent (Spectralite)

 so I can do some dyeing from the dye bucket I've brought home.

INDIGO DYEING WORKSHOP

 20/01/14 - 7 hours

Clay-pottery 14 January 2013

I almost didn't go this morning because I felt too tired but I'm glad I did because it was just what I needed to sooth and relax myself. I'm waking up really early with the cat (wanting breakfast?) which is part of my tiredness, but also had something happen that annoyed me and couldn't stop thinking about it! Anyway going and working on the clay was very therapeutic and I feel "in my happy place" again.

Silly me, though... in my confused-state this morning, I took a flask of tea in the car (to go to the Quarry) WITHOUT the bung/screw-in-thingy to keep the tea in! I'd screwed the cup on top but that wasn't enough to prevent the tea from slopping all round the boot when I drove around a corner and the flask fell over.. DUH! After cleaning the tea up I did get to be creative so it was all worth the mess.

 I decided to have a go at making pottery book cover.

The pattern is made using an acrylic stamp

 Ta-da! Very time consuming and fiddly, especially getting the pieces to be identical in size but now I've done the first pair I'm sure it''l get easier and faster as I discover "short cuts" to doing things like this.

 Then I got enthusiastic...with plants and natural textures

 Oh..and thanks to the cypress? tree that gave up a few of it's "leaves" for my experimentation lol!

 I lay the leaves on the sheet and then a slab of hand-rolled clay over the top.

 Of course, what I didnt think ablout was the movement of the clay as it went under the rollers. Well, I did but it didn't STOP me running the clay under the roller. Hey, it's really important to understand WHY you DON'T do something a certain way by fully seeing the error of your way!

 Anyway, I flipped the clay over so the leaves were on top,

 added some more and put it under the rollers again.

 Bad move Number Two..

.it was REALLY hard lifting all those little leaves off!

 And there was some cracking where the thicker part of the 

stalk pressed in, so I cut that off and worked around it.

Here's the end result.

I'm looking forward to returning next week

 to work on some more covers.

Time: 5 hours (14/01/14) 

(includes uploading photos to blog etc)

Clay-Pottery

A New Year 2014

This flax has been stewing for several weeks in these in bins and with the summer heat it smelled REAL BAD! And with it being so busy with work over Christmas/ New Year I knew I wouldn't get to doing any paper-making so added bleach to keep things "from growing" in there LOL!

 After cooking the flax with caustic soda for several hours

 the fibres need lots of rinsing

then processing to a pulp

 This mold and deckle is larger than my other two

 The sheets of paper are about 26 cm x 42 cm

so can be folded in half to make a signature 

for the coptic bound book making process

 Drying the paper on my trampoline. 

The sheet was laid over the paper 

(held down at the edges with 2x2 inch garden stakes)

to stop them blowing around the garden.

 It started to rain so I grabbed a tarpaulin 

which did the job of protecting them nicely!

 Dried and waiting to be made into a book like this....

 ..or this...

The covers are ceramic! I'm so keen to try making book

 like these my own ceramic covers and my handmade paper!  

Speaking of clay-making,

 I was a little disappointed with the end results of my glazing.

Here's what a mean...

 I'm not fussed on the mottled effect of this glazed 

but Sarah my daughter loves it so I've given these to her.

  I put a different glaze over the top of the forest green glaze 

and (in my opinion)  its spoiled it 

It was a suggestion by Els, one of the other 

women that does clay-making at the Quarry 

She loaned me some of her glazes to experiment with

and in my inexperience I just slapped it over the top.

Oh well....just means I need to keep on trying, yes?

 For Christmas I purchased myself a clay tool set.

It comes with the basic tools for pottery making and I am

 looking forward to using them so watch this space!